


Saturday Profile: Nancy Wheeler, America’s Investigative Journalist

by LeantheBean



Series: Where we go from here [1]
Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: F/M, Gen, Nancy Wheeler is a kickass reporter, New York Times Article, Unreliable Narrator, outside perspective, profile
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-09
Updated: 2019-07-09
Packaged: 2020-06-25 12:13:52
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,434
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19745551
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LeantheBean/pseuds/LeantheBean
Summary: By Maya ReedeNancy Wheeler sits in the living room of her chic midtown apartment with all the grace and aplomb of a princess holding court when we sit down to begin the interview. There is an old piece of journalistic wisdom coined by Joan Didion, paraphrased, that the job as a reporter requires making people forget that talking to the reporter isn’t in their best interest. Nancy Wheeler is the kind of person that makes it easy to forget[...]Continue Article





	Saturday Profile: Nancy Wheeler, America’s Investigative Journalist

Nancy Wheeler sits in the living room of her chic midtown apartment with all the grace and aplomb of a princess holding court when we sit down to begin the interview. There is an old piece of journalistic wisdom coined by Joan Didion, that being a reporter requires making people forget that talking to you isn’t in their best interest. Nancy Wheeler is the kind of person who makes it easy to forget.

Nancy is a delicate woman by nature. Her build is petite and slender, and she has thin fingers that tug sporadically on her linen capri-pants when she is considering her words. Her hair falls in an tumble of curls to her collarbones and she wears a yellow silk scarf tied in a knot around her neck. She seems more like a retired model than she does a Pulitzer Prize winning investigative journalist. It is easy to focus on her delicacy and miss the steel underneath. 

There are signs of that steel everywhere when one remembers to look for it. The most obvious sign is draped over the back of Nancy’s chair. The brown leather jacket that she fondly calls her “reporting jacket” is a key part of her mythos in the public imagination. 

A famous photo of Wheeler in that exact jacket went viral in 2015. The image of a female reporter crouched in the back of a truck full of refugees with her hand extended to a young desperate woman holding a baby, clearly falling behind, captured the public imagination. The still was taken by her husband Jonathan Byers, photographer and cinematographer who is famous in his own right. When a person hears the name Nancy Wheeler they often think of that photo, and that jacket.

There are other hints of Wheeler’s chosen profession throughout the space that she and her husband Jonathan call their own. Though the apartment seems on the surface to be a testament to chic modern design, there is a heavy pair of combat boots by the door that are spattered with years of mud. Peeking out of her large, knapsack-like, purse is the white reporter’s notebook that is the cornerstone of the trade. If one were to dig through the bag, they would almost certainly find her press pass, and, according to Wheeler, a knife. “You never know when it’ll come in handy!” She says with a laugh.

Wheeler is a fighter at her core, as everyone in the journalistic community knows. Her furious rant to the New York Times Politics Editor over the reporting on the Trump campaign was another viral Wheeler moment. Its popularity was only intensified by the setting, a divey Chinese food restaurant where the patrons looked on, equal parts horrified and baffled by Wheeler’s enraged shouting. 

She laughs when I bring it up, “Not even one of my top ten best rants. Just one of the few caught on camera. Jonathan thought it was hilarious that people were so shocked. I’ve really mellowed you know. 90’s Nancy would have been infuriated by my complacency.” 

It’s an interesting thought, Wheeler being complacent about anything ever. It’s even more interesting to consider in the context of where Wheeler got her start. While most of the country fell in love with Wheeler for her work exposing corporate corruption in the aftermath of 2008, or for her firebrand takes on the current American Political situation, she will always be best beloved in her home state of Indiana for the work she did in her high school years.

“What about ‘Hawkins Nancy’? What would she think about the work you’re doing, the work you’ve done?” Wheeler gets serious when I mention Hawkins. 

“It’s really hard to say. In my early years of high-school I never wanted to be a reporter, I was far more interested in science and math actually. Then my best friend went missing, and it felt like I couldn’t rest, like the world wasn’t right until I’d figured out what had happened. I don’t know if the me then could ever have dreamed a world where she would look like the me now.” Nancy’s voice is caught between wistful and hard as she describes this. The emotion isn’t raw, but its intensity is remembered with clarity. More importantly the drive it caused remains. 

The story of what happened to Nancy Wheeler’s best friend is journalistic gospel at this point. A government experiment caused a chemical leak that killed high school sophomore Barbra Holland. Rather than owning up to it, the government made it appear as though the young woman had simply disappeared. 

This was exposed in an incendiary article written for the Indiana Star, alongside proof in the form of a recorded admission of guilt. While the article had been written by a conspiracy theorist and private investigator named Murray Bauman, the tapes that circulated in the wake of the article featured a young Nancy Wheeler tricking an admission of guilt out of an overconfident government worker who hadn’t realized the lesson that so many had later learned, when Nancy Wheeler is asking the questions it's best just to keep your mouth shut.

“I would have done it differently now.” Nancy says ruefully. “I mean beyond being in charge of writing the article, not just gathering the evidence. We found proof of the cover up, but now I think about that and I just wince at all the other wrongdoing that almost certainly never came out. I was so single-minded in my need to get justice for Barb that a lot of individuals never faced any sort of consequences for their wrongdoing. They just left town. Probably did it again.” 

“Still,” I replied, “You got justice for your friend.” Nancy looks at me, considering. It feels like I am being weighed and measured. Those slim fingers tap on her thigh as she thinks of what she wants to say. 

“I got her a funeral. I felt like I had really done something important in the moment, but as you get older and more experienced you can’t help but realize past opportunities that were squandered. That was one of them.” Nancy’s lips pinch at the thought, and for the first time she actually seems to look her full fifty years. 

“You seem really focused on the individuals who were responsible,” I start, “are you still following the story of those people?” Nancy smiles in response. 

“I think that answering this requires a bit of recursion. When I approach a story, it gets categorized in my head as one of two types. Short-term and long-term. When you’re a journalist you have to write articles. Short term articles are your daily bread and butter. They update and inform the public on their present. They show how current events are progressing and how people might be affected. Often when doing the legwork for a short-term story you will stumble onto something more long-term.” Nancy pauses again, considering her words.

“A long-term story is one that you don’t want to write right away. It’s something that requires more legwork and investigation to make rock solid, or even to just fully understand what is going on. These stories tend to be complex and have powerful players which is why you don’t want the world to know when you’re writing them. The need to be tight enough and persuasive enough that no one can come for you when you’re done writing. Without getting too specific I would say I have several stories from my high-school years in Hawkins that fall into this category.”

“You capitalized on one of them though, right? The ‘Russian Story’ started during your time in Hawkins.” I say it like a question, but it isn’t. in 2017 Nancy Wheeler won a Pulitzer Prize for her exposure of a network of Russian operatives that spanned the entire country. I can tell she senses my eagerness over the subject matter even though I’ve tried to reign it in. I also get the sense that it amuses her. 

“The ‘Russian Story’ did start during my Hawkins time. It was actually connected to the legwork that I had done for my very first article.” I am visibly surprised by this and to anyone who is a fan of Nancy Wheeler’s work and legend, the reasons will be immediately clear. 

Nancy’s first article—published during the summer after her junior year—was printed by the Indiana Star and detailed how a strain of illness passed by rats resulted in the Hawkins Hospital Massacre. Wheeler’s perusal of the story of the ill rats had gotten her and her then boyfriend Jonathan fired from the Hawkins Post, the town newspaper. However, once the massacre occurred there was only one person with the whole story, and that was Nancy Wheeler. I was unclear on how the Russian spy ring tied in, so I asked. 

“Interestingly,” Nancy says, “it came from our investigation of who had been infected, which had led to Starcourt Mall.” Here I interject.

“Our?” 

“Actually, the investigation was multi-pronged. Jonathan and I were focused on the rats, while his mom was helping the Police investigate the land deeds for Starcourt Mall for bribery. Meanwhile my younger brother was trying to figure out why his friend’s big brother who had been infected was acting strangely. We all converged on the mall with different pieces of the bigger puzzle. 

To the people there it became clear that the mall was an organizational front for the Russian spy ring to move money and experiment, completely unrelated to the rats. The government shut them down and covered it up, but I had names and documentation from the earlier investigation. I followed the money and talked to people and eventually I had put together a full picture of this Russian spy ring.”

It was a masterful feat of reporting, and rightly led to Nancy Wheeler being awarded a Pulitzer Prize. Knowing that it started all those years ago in Hawkins is slightly mind-blowing. 

“So the whole discovery of the spy ring, it all began in Hawkins?” I ask, still slightly stunned by this revelation.

“You know, sometimes it feels like everything starts in Hawkins. No matter how far I go or what I do, Hawkins still manages to get me. It’s okay though, I’m happy and I’m telling the truth. What more could I possibly want.”

Nancy Wheeler smiles when she says it, and it’s like watching the sun come out. She’s one of the greatest reporters of all time, and she loves what she does. It’s impossible not to be inspired by her. Sitting there in her beautiful living room, as far from Hawkins Indiana as one could get, Nancy Wheeler seems to be the happiest woman on earth. 

She and I chatted for a while longer…

Q & A: 

Q: Do you go back to visit Hawkins often?

A: No not often. Neither mine nor Jonathan’s family lives there anymore, so there’s really no reason. There’s a lot of personal history wrapped up in Hawkins though, and I’m very attached to the people who are there, so we try to go back occasionally. 

Q: Speaking of Jonathan, he seems to feature in so many of your early investigations, do you miss working with him?

A: *Sighs* It’s complicated. Let me be clear, I love being with Jonathan, and I love having him with me when I’m working. He’s a great sounding board and person for me to view situations with, because he so often has a fresh perspective or sees something I don’t. That said, he’s an artist. He loves photography and making movies, those things make him so happy, and nothing makes me happier than seeing him loving what he’s doing. He’s always my partner in crime, but I’m glad he’s not my investigation buddy in the same way because he’s happier when he’s not. He’ll always come when I need to fight some monsters, and that’s good enough for me. 

Q: What's the biggest lesson you learned from those early years?

A: Don't get too greedy. It's a siren song, you want to be the one to break the story and you want to have everyone see what you're seeing, but it's a trap. Be patient, bide your time and make sure that you aren't missing anything, and that all your info is rock solid. If you rush you'll miss the bigger stories and the bigger opportunities. 

Q: What do you look for when you need a new story idea?

A: I tend to look for disenfranchisement. People who are being taken advantage of, there's no shortage of them. I think that as a person, I'm very attuned to the mundane. When most people hear an old lady raving about rats eating her fertilizer, they wouldn't give that the time of day. To me that's worth following up on. I don't come to my articles from the top down; I don't say, I want to take on organized crime today, hmm where to look? It's always bottom up. The neighborhood pizza place is being muscled out, the mall is putting small businesses out of business, these are the kinds of things I look for. It's not always going to turn into a long-term story, but even the short-term is important. Besides, once in a while something big will pan out. Also power outages and electrical problems, lights flickering and the like. You can always find monsters through the infrastructure.

Q: What do you mean by that?

A: Just that little problems often mean bigger problems. That's all.

Q: Jonathan was your high school boyfriend, and you’ve mentioned how you still love the people of Hawkins, is there anyone from the town that you’re still friends with now?

A: It’s funny, when I left for college in New York I thought I was never going to see any of the people I had known in Hawkins ever again, and I was glad for it. I had been put through so much that only the other people of Hawkins could understand, and I wanted to get away from people who really knew how screwed up I was. *Laughs* Cue five years later, I run across my old high school boyfriend while I’m following a story in New York. He and his best friend became some of my best contacts in the city, and he’s one of my and Jonathan’s favorite people now. We’re getting dinner tonight actually. Just goes to show. No matter how you try to escape it, it’s the ones that you share trauma with who stick around in your life. *Laughs*


End file.
